OP, on the day-to-day aspect, you have a lot of freedom to work that out for yourself. You need a fair amount of self-discipline to succeed at an OU degree, that's probably one of the big reasons why employers who hire OU graduates tend to be very happy with them.
They do have a huge problem with drop out rates. They do offer help with developing foundational skills if you need to, but that will require additional time commitment at the beginning fo the course. The lack of entry requirements does seem to mean that they get a lot of people who struggle with working at degree level and the (and I suspect this is by far the bigger factor) the self-discipline required means that a lot of people just can't keep motivated for a full course. I'm not sure how funding works for you. I was paying for myself so I started with just one module in case I found I just didn't get on with it. If you are liable to loose money or access to funding in the future, it might be worth trying that too but it does mean it takes longer to get through the course.
I did philosophy and other arts and humanities courses but not any english lit, so it's possible that's different but I suspect not, I received the course content and a schedule for coursework submission and tutorials. I also got a weekly "suggested" schedule for the work to cover. It's clear what course content you need to get through in order to be able to do complete the coursework. I recommend the steadier approach, though. When I did the full 120 credits/year I had something to submit pretty much every two weeks.
You can ignore the weekly schedule and just cram everything last minute so you can submit (and get extensions on essays too) if that's what fits your life better. For most people it's a really good idea to try put time aside on a regular basis so that you can stick to the suggested weekly schedule. I found tutorials were much more productive if you had done all the reading before hand (though many people did not). I probably spent an average of about 12ish hours a week on the course content when I had a full load and several more hours reading around, chatting with others on the course, attending tutorials, etc. I think that was fairly light but I was a pretty mature student and I think that tends to give you an edge in time management and focus.
You read the content (I think it's all provided online by default now, which is convenient but some people much prefer to pay to get a printed version). You look at the coursework, you make notes, develop your essay (remembering to focus on what the question is actually asking, not what you really want to tell them), edit it and submit with days to spare (or you stare at a blank page for days and then scribble down something just in time for the deadline - I did both!). They made, I thought, very poor use of technology. The content is all digital and you get access to an online academic library (which is awesome!) but if you've done any Coursera stuff you've probably had more sophisticated use of education technology. Maybe they've caught up in the last few years but I'm not hopeful, the university's focus was on how to stop people using technology in ways that undermined the way they'd been doing things for years, there was no interest in how it might improve people's learning - it was a few years ago, so that might have changed, students were pushing back quite hard.
The level 1 and 2 modules are normally designed to be self contained. You don't really get any marks for going outside the content you've been provided with. Level 3 is where it begins to feel a bit more grown up and doing your own reading is necessary to get higher marks but I recommend reading around your subject from the beginning (at least, that was the case with the social sciences).
They laid on a few in-person days at the beginning of the year on things like essay writing that are useful if you haven't done any academic essays since school (or, as in my case, had a science background!). And I found some really good facebook groups for each of my courses where you could discuss the subject matter.
There was also a push by the OU to do more collaborative work and most of my courses had tried to shoehorn some joint project into the coursework. These tended to be poorly developed and difficult as lots of students drop out or don't stick to the schedule so coordinating is a nightmare, but hopefully they've had a few more years to either make them better or drop them!
Tutorials and tutors were a bit hit and miss. I had four great tutors one poor one and one terrible one. The good ones are great if you're struggling.
Overall I found the degree and the experience really, really good. I'm proud of myself for completing it and I learnt a lot, not just about the areas I'm interested in but also about how to approach those subjects and really get more from them. Philosophy was the only disappointing subject. The curricula for the others were really well thought ought (much better than the Russell Group degree I'd did back in the 90s).